Still, it wouldn’t exactly hurt to find out a little more about Henry Cross, this man who’d fathered her and Hannah. This man people spoke of with a hushed reverence. This man who’d been honored with a memorial up on the harbor. Would it? Just this morning during her run, she’d seen a wreath of flowers laid at its feet. Her mother had been right. He was Westport. And although she’d felt less emotion than expected the first time she visited the brass statue, she was definitely curious about him. “Do you . . . have anything of Henry’s? Or maybe some pictures?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.” Opal popped up, moving pretty damn quickly for a woman her age, crossed to the living room, and retrieved a box from a shelf under the television. She took her seat again and removed the top, leafing through a few pieces of paper before pulling out an envelope marked Henry. She slid it across the table to Piper. “Go ahead.”
Piper turned the envelope over in her hands, hesitating momentarily before lifting the flap. Out spilled an old fisherman’s license with a grainy picture of Henry in the laminated corner, most of his face obscured by water damage. There was a picture of Maureen, twenty-five years younger. And a small snapshot of Piper and Hannah, tape still attached to the back.
“Those were in his bunk on the Della Ray,” Opal explained.
Pressure crowded into Piper’s throat. “Oh,” she managed, running her finger over the curled edges of the picture of her and Hannah. Henry Cross hadn’t been some phantom; he’d been a flesh-and-blood man with a heart, and he’d loved them with it. Maureen, Piper, Hannah. Opal. Had they been a part of his final thoughts? Was it crazy to feel like they’d deserted him? Yes, he’d chosen to perform this dangerous job, but he still deserved to be remembered by the people he loved. He’d had Opal, but what about his immediate family?
“He was a determined man. Loved to debate. Loved to laugh when it was all over.” Opal sighed. “Your father loved you to pieces. Called you his little first mate.”
That feeling Piper had been missing at the memorial . . . it rode in now on a slow tide, and she had to blink back the sudden hot pressure behind her eyes.
“I’m sorry if this was too much,” Opal said, laying a hesitant hand on Piper’s wrist. “I don’t get a lot of visitors, and most of my friends . . . Well, it’s a complicated thing . . .”
Piper looked up from the picture of her and Hannah. “What is?”
“Well.” Opal stared down into her coffee mug. “People tend to avoid the grieving. Grief, in general. And there’s no one with more grief than a parent who has lost a child. At some point, I guess I decided to spare everyone my misery and started staying home. That’s why I have my hair appointments here.” She laughed. “Not that anyone gets to see the results.”
“But . . . you’re so lovely,” Piper said, clearing her throat of the emotion wrought by the pictures. “There’s no way people avoid you, Opal. You have to get out there. Go barhopping. Give the men in Westport hell.”
Her grandmother’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I bet that’s more your department.”
Piper smiled. “You would be right.”
Opal twisted her mug in a circle, seeming unsure. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten used to being alone. This is the most I’ve talked to anyone besides Barbara in years. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to be social.” She exhaled. “I’ll think about it, though. I really will.”
Offering a relationship to this woman wasn’t a small thing. This was her grandmother. It wasn’t just a passing acquaintance. It could be a lifelong commitment. A relationship with actual gravity. “Good. And when you’re ready . . . I’m your wingwoman.”
Opal swallowed hard and ducked her head. “It’s a deal.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment, until Opal checked her watch and sighed. “I love Barbara to death, but the woman is flakier than a bowl of cereal.”
Piper pursed her lips, studied the woman’s close-cropped gray hair. “What were you planning on having her do?”
“Just a trim, like always.”
“Or . . .” Piper stood, moving behind Opal. “May I?”
“Please!”
Piper slipped her fingers into Opal’s hair and tested the texture. “You don’t know this, Opal, but you’re in the presence of a cosmetic genius.” Her lips curved up. “Have you ever thought about rocking a faux hawk?”
Twenty minutes later, Piper had shaped Opal’s hair into a slick, subtle hill down the center of her head, using the lack of a recent haircut to their advantage by twisting and spiking the gray strands. Then they’d broken out a Mary Kay makeup kit Opal had caved and purchased from a door-to-door saleslady—leading to her current suspicion of solicitors—and transformed her into a stunner.